Slate's Newly Unionized Writers and Editors Give OK to Strike
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I'm a Slate Plus member, mainly for the extra segment on the Slate Political Gabfest. Ironically, none of the three hosts of that show have worked at Slate in years, which is probably a large part of what makes it enjoyable.
For reasons I'd be hard-pressed to explain, I listen to a number of other Slate podcasts, even though I often find them irritating. Most (but not all) Slate writers and hosts come across less like thoughtful journalists or experts in their field, and more like college bloggers writing an angry screed about how everything in the world is terrible.
There are a few exceptions, but not many. And I do enjoy hearing from the actual experts they have on the various podcasts.
Kind of looking forward to watching this group of clowns destroy their own jobs.
In my country we seem to have this phenomenon for most of the established media, even more so with newer news outlets.
I think of this as a problem for our society, because the repercussions from the 'fourth-column' becoming this way are spilling over to the other three columns: E.g. once clearly differential political parties reshape their programs to align with what journalists want, lest for diminishing their attack surface. The result is a parliament with parties distinguishable by name only.
That creates huge vacuums in voter representation. Voters then turn to alternative news sources and political parties, which by their nature are more prone to be filled with/usurped by fringe extremists.
That in return leaves the repelled voters with increased attack surface and thus even less chance to participate in the democratic process, making them feel disenfranchised and ultimately not caring for what the "mainstream" says - even if it is good, correct and in their interest.
Edit: Regarding the strike itself, I'm not aware of the situation at Slate, but in general striking for me is an important tool of representation as well.
Your comment doesn't deserve downvotes.
I can’t believe they still find the time to do the Gabfest, John especially.
Worst case it'll bankrupt a company that won't really be missed. Best case we find a sustainable model for digital media. If I were a betting hominid, I'd say the former is more likely than the latter but you never know.
In the short term I suspect they won't strike at all. NYC and DC rents are expensive.
Can we deduct union dues? That 10% isnt looking too bad on a 200k comp package
The striking sounds exhausting though
Not that I'm surprised at all. The "Hacker" in "Hacker News" never included the anticapitalist and anarchist tendencies that are normally associated with "Hacker" in Europe/Germany. But what should one expect from a site run by a VC fund.
The biggest thing I object to here is their demand that Slate force every employee to fund the union, regardless of whether they want to. That’s ridiculous. Why are your ideas so weak that you have to force people to support them? And yes, I’m aware of the free rider problem. Still unconvinced that compulsory dues are justified.
Usually I define anarchism not as the removal of all authority, but the removal of all unjustifiable authority. From there unjustifiable depends on your moral compass.
(i'm a "commie" if you haven't caught on, anarcho-syndicalist if you want to google something)
Obviously, it all falls apart when you try to implement it but that's not realistically going to happen again. So there's no actual downside.
The idea that journalists can be biased is not something the profession was somehow unaware of previously.
In the same way that scientists understand that they probably can make up data plausibly, they realize that they make their name with their credibility.
But of course society is presently at the adolescent phase of realizing you can physically say and do whatever you want...whether bad science and bad journalism are confronted by the social analog of thr prefrontal cortex is uncertain. Maybe repercussions will help (collapse of democracy and global warming being the two most likely)
From what I can tell, virtually none of those work at Slate.
Unless what they are saying (journalists and scientists) conform to the dominate politics of the day. Plenty of major media outlets run stories with anonymous, non-corroborated sources but since those stories fit the desired narrative of their consumers, they get away with it, credibility intact.
A conservative outlet can have corroborated evidence, multiple sources and be chastised strictly on the basis of their conservative angle, while an outlet like The NY Times can publish anonymous op-eds without any corroboration and it doesn’t make a dent in their credibility among the majority of their readers. How many anti-Trump stories feature “anonymous” sources without a single shred of on-the-record corroboration? Yet, since the story confirms the bias of the readership, again, credibility remains intact. The Supermicro story is another example: completely uncorroborated, yet I bet not a single person cancelled their terminal subscription because of it.
Credibility only matters if the writer is going against the biases of their readers.
As far as global warming, plenty of scandals, such as Climategate, but the credibility of the climate-alarmists hasn’t been affected one bit among those that are predisposed to believe that the sky is, in fact, falling. Climategate was a serious scandal that calls into question the entire premise upon which the climate industry is based, yet that probably changed not a single person’s mind. It’s would be like telling Christians that Jesus never existed. It wouldn’t convince anyone who is already a believer. Global Warming is the modern world’s version of “going to hell if you don’t repent.”
Credibility doesn’t matter as long as you affirm fashionable biases.
To be completely fair, this isn’t a leftist phenomenon: plenty of anti-Obama news outlets could play loose with the facts and still have “credibility” with those predisposed to have opposed Obama’s policies. Same for the anti-vax crowd, the anti-GMO crowd and every other crowd where any challenge of their reality is tantamount to sacrilege.
In the long run, involuntary transfers of income and other violations of market rights stunt wage growth by reducing the incentive to invest, and to perform well at one's workplace, both of which inhibit growth in productivity.
It also doesn't follow that increased incentive to invest in employers translates to higher wages for laborers — why wouldn't employers keep wages stagnant and pocket the money themselves? (In practice, this is often what happens.)
Force people to pay any more than the market rate for labor, and you're artificially under-valuing investment capital, and thus disincentivizing delayed-consumption/long-term-investment. In other words, you'll be incentivizing people to save/invest less of their income than is optimal for maximum economic development, and it is economic development that is responsible for virtually all reductions in poverty and improvements in quality of life for the general population.
>>It also doesn't follow that increased incentive to invest in employers translates to higher wages for laborers — why wouldn't employers keep wages stagnant and pocket the money themselves?
Employers have to compete with each other for employees. Why else do you think wages would ever increase? I really recommend you study standard economic theories on wage growth, or the economic history of any major country, to better understand the interplay between per capita production and wages. Look at China over the last 20 years, where wages have tripled. There is no force that increases wages as much as economic growth, which hinges almost entirely on investment capital.
I think most media outlets like Slate gave up chasing this goal. Unfortunately, the consumers have rewarded them for doing so.
I don't even think that "impartial" is necessarily even worth striving for. No one is impartial and I'd much rather journalists be open and honest about their world view and assumptions rather than trying to hide them behind some thin veneer of "impartiality". As long as you're not being underhand or deceptive in your reporting there is nothing wrong in saying "This thing happened and I think it's great/terrible for these reasons".
I usually get frustrated with opinion-based content though because it seems to me that it's more about posturing, being the loudest/funniest, looks/appearance, etc. and less about trying to uncover good solutions to real problems.
However, as you mentioned, no one is impartial, so that leaves me with very little content I enjoy consuming which is not that great either in terms of staying informed or engaged.
No, they aren't. Law sometimes expresses either a consensus view or a compromise between views of rights, sometimes it deals with things at a level only distantly related to rights.
> which are inalienable.
Even in most conceptions of rights that include some inalienable rights, not all rights are inalienable.
Says who?
If we want an argument for the inalienability of natural/human rights that works in a society with religious pluralism, I fear we'll need to look again.
Any meaningful system of ethics is characteristically normative, which means it rests on authority; divine authority is the highest form of authority that can be thought of.
This has many interesting implications. At the moment many industrial unions like Trump's policies, so I bet there is some equivocation in some pockets.
The other thing I'm interested to see is if this strike will deal a final blow to Slate (basically see if they will go down due to principles, but at the same time risk weakening their company)